The Hidden Truth Behind the Heeters: How Dragon Ball Super's Granolah Arc Villains Mirror Frieza's Old Self

The Heeters were the main villains of Dragon Ball Super's Granolah arc, and the way we read them, Elec and Gas are each built from aspects of Frieza's old personality from Dragon Ball Z. That idea ties the family back to Journey to the West and gives Frieza's eventual takedown of them a symbolic meaning.

Here we look at the inspiration behind the Heeter family, where Toriyama may have borrowed the concept, and how the Heeters relate to Frieza. We also cover the scene where Frieza takes out Elec and Gas.

The Heeters are not just another Bojack gang

A lot of people have said that the Heeters remind them of the Bojack gang. I can kind of see where that comes from, because they have that same space pirate vibe. But the Heeters behave a little differently. Bojack had his minions, and they were fairly faceless characters.

The Heeters, I feel, actually had personalities. In fact, they had different aspects of Frieza's personality, and that connects back to Journey to the West. I was joined for this discussion, as always, by Jordan, the Dragon Lee.

Goku's villains have long reflected the flaws of the Monkey King

In past arcs, most of the villains Goku has faced carry character traits that emulate the Monkey King. They want to be a king or an emperor, they want to rule the entire universe, and they want to be the strongest and most powerful. That quest for power reflects who the Monkey King used to be in Journey to the West.

So as Goku faces these villains, it is as though he is facing traits of the character he is based on. As we put it, that makes it more interesting to see "a purified version of The Monkey King face all these villains who have his detriments."

The Granolah arc tried something new. Granolah and the Heeters each represent the flaws of two other characters, Vegeta and Frieza. Granolah carries a lot of Vegeta's negative character traits, and the story plays on that. Every Heeter, particularly Elec and Gas, has personality traits that heavily emulate who Frieza used to be, at least in Dragon Ball Z.

Elec plays the King Cold role while chasing Frieza's empire

Elec leads a group of space pirates and has ambitions of taking over the universe, exactly like Frieza. On a first read of the Granolah arc, he gave off really strong King Cold vibes, especially since he always seems to have a glass of wine in his hand. King Cold had that same aristocratic look when he was introduced, the very typical Disney villain kind of image.

The difference is that King Cold actually controlled the empire, while Elec wants control of the very same empire that Frieza now governs, and he is willing to do what it takes. He is cunning and driven by the quest for power. He is also a scumbag, and Frieza has shown aspects of being a slimy, two faced scumbag who does not care about anybody but himself, including members of his own family. In Resurrection F, Frieza is asked about resurrecting King Cold and basically declines to bother. That compares with Elec not really caring about Gas dying in the final battle.

Elec also knows how to manipulate people, recruiting them under his wing and using them to his advantage. Many of his interactions with Gas mirror how King Cold believed he had Frieza under his thumb. To us, that relationship is very similar to King Cold and Frieza's. Once Frieza was born and proved far more powerful, King Cold fell back on manipulating others to do his dirty work because he was no longer the strongest.

Gas is Bardock's Frieza

Gas is the most powerful member of the Heeters, and he is easily offended whenever a character makes him look weaker than someone else. He has a very large ego, and that reminds us a lot of Frieza. In fact, you can consider Gas to be Bardock's Frieza. When Bardock faced him, Gas told Bardock that he represented a limit Bardock could not surpass. He also gives Goku a hard time for being a less evolved, less complicated being than the Heeters, which is something Frieza did to Goku.

The relationship between Gas and Bardock is very similar to Frieza's relationship with Goku. Bardock is essentially the first person to ever break Gas's ego and pride. Gas also hates to lose. Elec uses the Dragon Balls to grant Gas his wish to become the strongest in the universe, and even as Gas's body is literally wasting away, he refuses to lose to Goku or swallow his pride.

The same thing happened with Frieza. Goku gave him chance after chance to live, not just recently but in the older material too, and Frieza kept trying to kill Goku anyway. Gas, likewise, cannot accept that he has been beaten.

Elec and Gas repeat the mistakes Frieza once made

When Frieza trained for his golden form, he got that power very quickly, a little like Gas being wished to be the strongest. The first thing he did was go after Goku for revenge, and that was a huge mistake. It was the same mistake Gas made: with new power in hand, he assumed he could take everyone out, and he was wrong.

Elec mirrors the old Frieza too, through the foolish way the old Frieza gathered and used intel. Frieza would pit people against each other and create enemies who eventually turned on him, whether it was Vegeta or Goku. His ego made him charge into situations without thinking them through. Elec seems to have a master plan, but he did not think it all the way through, and it failed in the end. He also shares Frieza's lust for the Dragon Balls, which drove Frieza when he was first introduced.

Toriyama likes to run characters through the same cycles. Frieza being killed, sealed in Hell and placed in a cocoon to think about his actions is very similar to Buddha sealing Sun Wukong under a mountain to reflect on his sins. As we see it, Frieza "doesn't come out of it a better person he actually just comes out of it a more intelligent person."

When Frieza kills Elec and Gas, he symbolically destroys his old self

Look at what Elec and Gas are each doing when Frieza takes them out. Gas just wants revenge on everyone in sight, Goku, Vegeta and Granolah, and when he finally sees Frieza, his need to feed his ego and his revenge is what gets him killed, by Frieza himself. Dragon Ball keeps returning to characters facing their past traits and symbolically destroying them, as Vegeta and Granolah do in this arc. When Frieza destroyed Elec and Gas, he symbolically destroyed two old aspects of his personality.

Those aspects are still there, though. He is "still evil but he's just smarter about how he goes about it." Elec prided himself on having information but did not have enough, while Frieza knew everything from the beginning and had his bases covered. The old Frieza would have rushed in for revenge. This time he sat, watched, listened and let the problem work itself out, then used the strength he had trained for to remove two threats to his empire.

He was not worried about Goku or Vegeta, because he knows them better and sees them as assets he can manipulate further. Elec never thought that far; he wanted to keep everything in the family and believed Gas was the only person he needed. Gas trained for 40 years, but to satisfy his vengeance he was willing to wish for his full potential. Modern Frieza would never do that, because he has seen the value in training and solving problems with his own power. Going down so many times is what finally made him learn, and his character has evolved.

Oil and Macki offer little beyond echoes of Frieza

There is not much to Oil and Macki. They mostly became Frieza's henchmen, in some ways taking the place that Dodoria and Zarbon once held, and they were not that big of a deal. Macki did bring Frieza to mind when she went and recruited Goku and Vegeta while basically acting like a damsel, which echoed the Broly film where Frieza faked Paragus being killed. Beyond that, she carries the same evil feminine energy Frieza has.

One last point: Frieza also took out Elec because he realised Elec was trying to set him up to be killed by Gas and overthrown. Elec had no idea Frieza had gone to train, and no idea what was really going on.

Do you see Elec and Gas as pieces of Frieza's old personality, or are the Heeters closer to the Bojack gang after all?